Tools

Tools help you do things in the world. You can carry them with you in your backpack for ready use, or store them in a chest when not immediately needed. You can upgrade your tools at the Blacksmith for money and metal bars, with upgrades taking two days to complete. During the upgrade, you can't buy anything or ask Clint to break open geodes. (Break open your geodes before giving him a tool to upgrade.) Tools must be upgraded in ascending order of materials; for example, a copper tool can't be upgraded directly to iridium.

Tip: The practical meaning of an upgrade "taking two days to complete" is that you will wake up on two successive days without your tool. (It is at the blacksmith's.) This means that on the day you bring it in to be upgraded, you may first use the tool for any number of hours, so long as you hand it over to the blacksmith before the shop's closing time. You will then have one complete day without the tool. The second day, you may retrieve the upgraded tool at any time after the shop opens, and then use it freely. Thus, "two days" does not end up meaning exactly 48 hours, but something less than that. It is somewhat clearer to think of it as two nights.

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Energy Consumption

Using an upgradeable tool consumes some of the player's daily energy, as reflected in the energy bar. The base consumption is two energy points for each tool use. Consumption decreases as the player gains skills levels, an effect the game describes as "increased proficiency" when it announces a new level has been reached. The farming skill affects the hoe and watering can, foraging affects the axe, and mining affects the pickaxe. At each new level of experience, the energy consumption decreases another 5% from the base amount, so at level 5, consumption is 25% less than the base (down by a quarter), meaning that it is three-quarters of the base amount, or 1.5 energy per tool use. At level 10 it is down by 50% (half), that is, down to the remaining half, or 1 energy per tool use.

Note: If you calculate the effects of multiple tool uses yourself at various skill levels, you may discover small variances in total energy use from what the game reports. These are due to performing calculations in different orders, and rounding to whole number values at different times.

Each tool upgrade also makes the tool more efficient by decreasing the amount of energy required to accomplish a given task, sometimes by increasing the amount of work done by a single tool use. The effects are independent of and additional to the efficiencies provided by skill levels. They are, however, specific to each tool's operation and the boosts that the upgrades give. In fact, if an advanced tool is using the specific operation that is added with the copper upgrade, then that operation receives the same efficiency boost you would get with a copper tool. For that one tool use, an iridium tool is not different from a copper tool. More details may be found in the specific tools articles.

While strictly speaking, fishing poles are not upgradeable, but only replaceable with higher-grade tools, it still requires energy to use them. The bamboo pole may be thought of as comparable to a base-grade farm tool, the fiberglass rod as comparable to a steel-grade tool, and the iridium rod to an iridium-grade tool.

Hoes

Used to dig and till soil. After you have upgraded to the copper hoe, hold down left click to cycle between the different areas of effect. Hoes can also be used to dig up Artifact Spots seen around the world, to reveal hidden items.

An untillable tile does not prevent the hoe from doing a multiple-tile operation that includes that tile; it just skips any untillable tiles, which remain unchanged.

It is noteworthy that the hoe cannot till areas with floor/path tiles placed on them. This also prevents objects placed on these floor/path tiles from being uprooted. Hence, placing sprinklers or scarecrows on top of a floor/path tile aids in efficiently tilling soil when the season changes.

You can use the hoe to dig up dirt off-farm to get clay. In the Winter you can also get Winter Root and Snow Yams.

Axes

Used to chop down Trees for wood and sap and to gather Hardwood from a Large Stump or a Large Log.
Like the pickaxe, it can deal a small amount of damage to monsters.
At each upgrade level, it takes 2 fewer hits to fell a tree and 1 fewer to chop a stump.

Watering Cans

Used to water crops. A crop plant does not grow on a day it is not watered. If it is raining, the rain waters all crops without use of the watering can.

Upgrading the watering can changes what a sustained left click does: you hold down the left click to increase the can's areas of effect. After multiple upgrades, hold the left click longer to increase the effect level by level and release for effect when you arrive at your chosen level.